I read over an interesting article today that sheds some light on the Catholic view of Orthodoxy:
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/orthodox.html
Aidan Nichols is an extremely nice fellow and he writes out of an old-fashioned Anglican ethos which scarcely exists today. That means that he looks for convergences and he searches for ways to pour water on troubled water and to maintain unity against all odds. This is part of the Anglican "genius."
It is probably only in the concluding section that he comes to what will forever separate us - the papacy. And while he sees a universal primacy as a fundamental need for the Church the Orthodox believe that the institution of the papacy is a major aberration in the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church, something which Christ never called into existence.
Before there can be unity between us this institution must be destroyed. It has no place in the Church.
I believe that the words of St. Justin (Popovich) the great modern Serbian
Teacher, are more than a propos:
"...the Orthodox Church, in its nature and its dogmatically unchanging
constitution is episcopal and centered in the bishops. For the bishop and
the faithful gathered around him are the expression and
manifestation of the Church as the Body of Christ, especially in the Holy
Liturgy; the Church is Apostolic and Catholic only by virtue of its bishops,
insofar as they are the heads of true ecclesiastical
units, the dioceses.
"At the same time, the other, historically later and variable forms of
church organization of the Orthodox Church: the metropolias, archdioceses,
patriarchates, pentarchies, autocephalies, autonomies, etc., however many
there may be or shall be, cannot have and do not have a determining and
decisive significance in the conciliar system of the Orthodox Church.
Furthermore, they may constitute an obstacle in the correct functioning of
the conciliary principle if they obstruct and reject the episcopal character
and structure of the Church and of the Churches.
"Here, undoubtedly, is to be found the primary difference between Orthodox
and Papal ecclesiology."
-oOo-
"No heresy has ever raised up so radically and so completely against the God-Man Christ
and His Church as has the Papacy, with its dogma of the infallible Pope-man. There is no doubt:
this dogma is the heresy of heresies."
Archimandrite Justin Popovic, "Man and God-Man", Athens, 1987